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Leon can feel it crawling in the back of his throat. Swimming in his lungs, a murky puddle of phlegm the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Climbing up his rib-cage like a ladder, latching on and swinging, dragging him down, heavier than anything he has ever felt. Even heavier than the self-doubt that has arisen out of nowhere.
He is supposed to be able to do this. It shouldn't be this difficult. All he has to do is find Ashley and bring her home, and sure he's already half done, but no one told him it was going to be this painful. No one told him of the absolute fucking nightmare Spain would be. No one even gave him much in the terms of ways to defend himself— Stealing pesetas from the villagers and bartering them with the mysterious merchant has helped him more greatly than he had ever thought.
He can't help but feel completely fucking abandoned by the U.S Government, his supposed employers, because surely they didn't throw him in here on purpose? Surely they didn't knowingly toss Leon, already traumatized from working in Raccoon City, and the countless other missions, into another biohazard shit show? Surely they didn't know that he would fail so horribly like this? That he would become one of these, these Ganados, he thought they were called, because he had the sheer stupidity to get himself kidnapped.
His neck still throbs where the injection went in, and he sneaks a peak at Ashley to see her rubbing her neck as well. They're sitting on the floor of one of the village houses, where Leon thinks it might be safe for a bit. That's a lie, they're never really safe, not with this thing inside of them.
Las Plagas, or The Plague, or as Leon would call it, his downfall, because he is never getting out of it. He is going to die here, he will never complete his mission.
He stands up, swaying a bit.
"Wait here," He tells Ashley, and she nods, blond strands bobbing up and down. There's a cabinet to her left and she knows to hide in there if trouble arises.
Leon heads upstairs. He doesn't carry his gun or his knife. Stupid move. He knows it is. But he doesn't really care to, and the second floor is empty, so there is no need anyway. He picks up a few grenades lying on a table, pocketing them for later, and ponders why these creatures keep weapons lying around that they don't even use. It's all pitchforks, and dynamite, and axes, and chainsaws, and their bare hands, never such modern weapons as these.
Whatever the reason is, he doesn't turn down free explosives.
He sits down on the bed, and just the action alone makes his stomach turn twenty different ways. It's disgusting, half of it drenched in a putrid liquid that he doesn't even try to guess. He's sitting on the dry half thankfully, and he studies the blood staining the wooden floor everywhere.
Or at least, he tries to study it. He really does, and he should be quite good at it. When he was younger, he was great with attention to detail. Praised for it in art projects, in English classes when he would correct other's punctuation.
But then his throat starts crawling again, and he coughs. It sounds horrible, but he does it again, and the motherfucker still won't stop fucking crawling.
He brushes over his mouth with his fingers.
He might kill himself if this thing doesn't stop.
The thought makes his breaths quicken, and he coughs again.
Better to kill himself before it kills him first.
There are specks of blood on his fingers.
Even if it doesn't kill him, he'd surely rather be dead than become a Ganado.
He tries to swallow, but he can't.
He'd kill Ashley first, because he knows he can't leave her to fend for herself. They can both die as humans, as themselves. Sure, he fails his job, fails both of them, but either path is failure, really
The specks of blood grow.
Ashley will thank him.
He shoves his fingers into his mouth, down his throat, gagging on them. His horrible coughing begins again, and he spits up blood, scarlet staining the wooden planks under his feet, dripping off of his saliva-coated fingers. He should be daunted by the scene, but he isn't, and he forces his fingers back into his mouth. Scrapes them along the back of his throat, and then he's retching again, and he hates and loves it at the same time.
Maybe he can puke this thing out. Throw it up, on the floor, and then finish it with one shotgun blast. He doesn't even know what it would look like, but surely he would know it if he saw it.
Leon coughs up more blood, so much that it can't really be called a stain on the floor anymore. It's more of a puddle, spreading across the room, and even more drips from his lips. He wipes at it, to notice his veins have faded to a monochrome grey color, enough that his entire arm seems greyed out. Probably the rest of his body too, but he doesn't have a mirror at the moment and he doesn't think he wants to find out anyways.
"Leon?"
Ashley is breaking the rules, she's not supposed to call out for him, because then people know they're here, and when people find out they're here, they implant fucking parasites in them
He coughs. "What?"
"Are you okay?" The words don't seem like hers, coming from her light voice. They shouldn't be her words at all. Leon should be asking if she's okay, because he is supposed to be the responsible one between them, the one that is brave. The one that is okay.
"Yes—" And that's all he gets out before he starts another round of retching up blood. It gets on his shoes now, but they were already dirtied with blood and pus from Ganados so it doesn't make much difference.
For a second, he wishes the merchant were here. Maybe some first-aid spray would cure his nausea, and he would've tried it already if Ashley hadn't needed it after getting cornered by a few villagers. Maybe if he gets enough bottles of it, he can cure himself of Las Plagas completely. Spray them all down his throat, choke it down, disinfect his insides.
Anything to stop the feeling in the back of his throat.
He remembers his knife tucked into his belt and pulls it out, staring at the dulled metal. At the beginning of this mission it was a bright silver. Now, it's barely even grey, a rusted brown blade covered in dried blood and every other liquid he's had the unfortunate luck of coming across.
He licks his lips and points the knife towards his stomach.
He can dig this thing out. If he can't throw it up, he'll get it out another way. He can dig to the roots, yank it out, stop the control that it has over him.
Only it feels as if it's everywhere inside of him, gnawing at his brain, dancing in between his ribs, boiling to the surface of his veins, even aching in his crotch. He doesn't even know where to begin to dig. His neck would be a good start, being where it was implanted, but surely it's spread from there.
He unbuckles his vest and pulls up his undershirt. He traces his skin before plunging down with the knife, cutting a slash over his stomach.
The first thing he notices isn't the pain. It isn't even the red welling up. It's the air that hits the wound, hitting him, and it feels like a breath of fresh air. He gasps. He wouldn't say he loves this feeling per say, but he absolutely does not hate it at this moment. He feels free, limp even, like the plague is disconnecting from him, seeping out of the open cut. He thinks he can feel phantom tentacles creeping across the skin, leaving him, and he starts to laugh in relief.
Loud bursts of laughter, enough to alert the entire village, turn to more coughing. Ribbons of blood are thrown up, murkier and thicker than before, and Leon gags on them. Hot, clear liquid joins the blood, and it takes Leon more beats than it should to realize he's crying.
"Leon?"
Ashley sounds closer. Like she's at the bottom of the stairs, unsure if she wants to see what Leon is doing. She doesn't, she really really doesn't. But Leon doesn't respond this time, and she forces enough bravery out of herself to walk up the stairs.
"Leon!" She wraps her arms around herself, and slowly steps through the pools of blood, wincing at the squelching sounds her shoes make. "What happened?"
He's still holding his knife, and the pain has finally set in. Tears are silently dripping down his face. He wants to sob, but he has to be composed in front of Ashley. Thankfully, the nausea has stopped for now, as has the blood that came with it. He can still feel a thin coating of it in the back of his throat, but he doesn't try to spit it out. He doesn't want to move his mouth at all, so he answers Ashley with as little lip movement as possible.
"I want it out of me."
Ashley sways back and forth, worriedly. "I know, Leon." She swallows, and by the look on her face, she has blood in her throat too. "We just have to get out of here and then back home, they'll fix us. My dad— My dad will know what to do."
The sob that Leon has been trying to hold back escapes, and it surprises both of them. "We're not getting out of here, Ashley. I have no back-up, Hunnigan hasn't been answering, we're all the way in fucking Spain. We're up against hundreds of fucking zombies, if you wanna call them that, and we're on the verge of becoming one of them."
Ashley bows her head. "You're bleeding." She says, not knowing what to say in response to Leon's pessimism, instead choosing to deal with the one thing she knows for certain. Her brows furrow. "Did you cut yourself...on purpose?"
"It wasn't really an accident." Leon mumbles sheepishly.
"Okay, where are our herbs?"
"Gone. Same with the first-aid spray."
"Okay." Ashley swallows and sits down next to Leon. "I don't— I-I don't know what to do, Leon." She pulls her legs up, and wraps her arms around them, curling into a ball, rocking back and forth.
"Me neither," Leon responds. His voice cracks on "neither", and that sets him off again, crying. It takes him a few minutes to compose himself, and when he does, he asks, "Do you remember the last place we saw the merchant?"
Ashley shakes her head.
"Okay." Leon touches the edges of his wound and fresh blood sticks to his fingers. He grimaces, when suddenly he hears the sound of a Ganado. Instinctively, he grabs his handgun, breaking out of his depressed trance. He can hear rummaging downstairs, and Ashley, still curled in a ball, wraps one hand around his arm. He can feel how rapid her pulse is.
Soon one rears his head around the corner, coming up the stairs. It's a man, or at least at some point it was. Leon shakily shoots, aiming for the head. Though it takes about five shots, he's soon dead. He stays in this heightened sense of alert for a bit longer, unsure of how many more are coming. When no more do, he lets himself slowly relax, bit by bit.
"Why did you do that?" Ashley whispers, once again staring at his stomach.
Leon only repeats, "I want it out of me."
"I don't...th-think that's how it works..."
"Maybe I was trying to kill myself too," He huffs. "Maybe."
Ashley swallows. A clot of blood gets caught in her throat, and she starts a coughing fit not unlike Leon's. Blood drops splatter on the floor, a significantly small volume in comparison.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm doing better than you, I'd guess." She snorts, and wipes her lips with her hand, cringing at her now bloodstained fingers. "Do you think you can walk?"
"I can walk. The question is, am I able to do it without saying "Fuck" every three steps? Because that remains undetermined." Leon moves to stand. His face contorts in pain, and he presses his hands over the wound, sinking back down into the mattress. "I take that back; It has been determined: No." His stomach twists and he coughs, but it's thankfully dry this time.
"Do you want me to go get someone?" Ashley asks. "Maybe the merchant is nearby, or I could look for Luis—"
"Don't." Leon spits. "Give me a couple more minutes, then we can get out of here." He's still holding his knife, he now realizes, and he sticks it back into his belt.
Ashley is still shaken from seeing Leon come apart in front of her. "Leon are you—"
Leon cuts her off. "If it gets me before we find the cure— You'll shoot me, right?"
"Leon—" She whines.
"Shoot me, Ashley. If I get too far gone, then you'd better shoot me, and then yourself too, because you won't be far behind. I'll do the same if it gets you first." He isn't looking at her anymore, instead scraping dried blood from his knuckles.
Ashley graces him with a tiny nod, one she's not quite sure she means, and it doesn't really matter because Leon doesn't see it at all.
"Leon—" She starts again.
"Stop." He hisses, drumming his knuckles against his thighs. Then he realizes how harsh he's being and groans. "Fuck, I'm so sorry that I was the agent sent on this mission. I'm not fucking fit for this. I should be used to viruses and surviving, and being on my own and fucking—" He gestures wildly towards the rest of the village. "Zombies."
"But I'm not." He looks at her again.
She doesn't respond, still shaking.
"We can keep going." Leon tells her, picking himself up from the mattress slowly. "I'll lag behind you probably—" He clutches a hand to his stomach. "But we can go."
Fake it til you make it fake it til you make it fake it til you make it.
Fake that there is absolutely nothing inside of you because if you do that, maybe nothing will be inside of you.
He follows Ashley downstairs and to the door. Paint is peeling away from the wood in several places, most prominent near the holes from gunshots. Leon presses an ear to the door to see if he can hear any Ganados muttering amongst themself, or worse yet, another one of those goddamned chainsaws.
It is quiet.
He opens his mouth to tell Ashley to go ahead of him, but then he chokes on something in his throat. Thick, and curling, burning and freezing the inside of his throat, as impossible as that may seem. Whatever it's doing to his throat, he gets the gist that soon enough he may not have a throat; much less the rest of him.
He tastes blood for the millionth time today, and collapses on the ground.